Rackspace today announced an enhanced strategic, channel relationship with cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to streamline the experience for customers moving to AWS. Customers who are looking to migrate to AWS often lack the internal resources and expertise needed to move workloads rapidly and effectively. With this relationship, AWS and Rackspace are now able to work more closely to provide customers with their respective expertise, thereby enabling their journey to AWS.

The strategic relationship between AWS and Rackspace consists of three key components:

Solution and Migration Advisory Services -- Customers now have access to AWS-specific technical resources from Rackspace to help plan the migration of their applications and data. Rackspace can assess current workloads including server types and configurations, network topology, evaluate security, governance and compliance requirements, and design the systems architecture from the AWS catalogue that is the best fit for the customers' workloads.

Migration Service Delivery -- Rackspace engineers can leverage AWS Professional Services from a shared work space inside of Rackspace headquarters that enables Rackspace to efficiently migrate or provision new applications on AWS. This approach provides customers with the ability to leverage deep solutions expertise and ongoing operational support from Rackspace throughout the migration process for a wide array of workloads.

Rackspace Advanced Migration Tooling -- Delivered as a "point & click", self-service interface within the Rackspace Control Panel, this software uses automation to enable customers to easily move various workloads to AWS. The interface and recommendation engine will also display optimal locations, instance sizing, and cost comparisons for the customer environments to be migrated.

"We have worked closely with Rackspace over the last several years and have been very impressed by their dedication to invest in the capabilities required to become one of the next-generation leaders in the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner Program," said Terry Wise, global vice president of channels and alliances, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Rackspace is a solid example of an AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner we'd recommend to customers who are moving to AWS and we are thrilled to align more closely with them to create value for our customers."

Rackspace is a qualified APN Premier member and audited AWS Managed Service Partner. Rackspace and AWS are working with some of the world's most recognizable brands to facilitate seamless migrations to AWS. Six Flags, the world's largest theme park company, is a long-time Rackspace customer that is leveraging the combined migration advisory, engineering, and managed service delivery capabilities provided by Rackspace and AWS.

"As a 10 year Rackspace customer interested in moving to AWS, we were excited to learn we could still leverage the Rackspace Fanatical Support we were used to throughout our entire cloud journey, including our move to AWS," said Sean Andersen, corporate director of interactive at Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. "Rackspace and AWS have worked together with our internal team to help us plan and execute the successful migration of key workloads to AWS, and the alignment we have been able to maintain due to their close partnership has been invaluable."

"We are excited about the opportunity to work even more closely with AWS to enable companies to take full advantage of AWS services," said Prashanth Chandrasekar, vice president and general manager of Rackspace Fanatical Support for AWS business. "As an AWS Managed Services Partner, Rackspace now offers customers a wide range of services including migrations, architecture and cloud automation professional services, in addition to ongoing managed services. We are proud to back all of these capabilities with Rackspace's industry-leading Fanatical Support."